Fenchurch Street railway station

on the London Underground network. The station frontage is on Fenchurch Place, adjacent to Fenchurch Street in the City of London. The station has two entrances: one on Fenchurch Place and another on Cooper's Row, near Tower Hill. It has four platforms arranged on two islands elevated on a viaduct. The station has been Grade II listed since 1972 Following rail privatisation in 1994, the station was run by Network Rail. Since 1996, the station has been served by c2c. Fenchurch Street is in London fare zone 1 like other terminal stations in the city, but it does not have a direct link to the London Underground. The nearest stations on the London Underground network are Tower Hill about to the southeast and Aldgate around to the northeast. ==History==

London and Blackwall Railway The area around Fenchurch Street is one of the oldest inhabited parts of London; the name "Fenchurch" derives from the Latin faenum (hay) and refers to hay markets in the area. The station was the first to be granted permission by the Corporation of London to be constructed inside the City of London, following several refusals against other railway companies. The original building, designed by William Tite opened on 20 July 1841, serving the London and Blackwall Railway (L&BR), replacing a nearby terminus at Minories that had opened in July 1840. It had two platforms connected via a stairway to the booking hall. Steam locomotives did not use the station until 1849 because before this time trains were dragged uphill from to Minories, and ran to Fenchurch Street via their own momentum. The reverse journey eastwards required a manual push from railway staff. William Marshall's railway bookstall established at the station in 1841 was the first to be opened in the City of London. Eastern Counties Railway and London, Tilbury and Southend Railway . The zig-zag canopy is an addition from the 1870s. Following the opening of the London and Blackwall Extension Railway on 2 April 1849, services operated from Fenchurch Street to Bow & Bromley. Some were extended to where an interchange existed with the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) from . On 26 September 1850, the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway (renamed the North London Railway (NLR) on 1 January 1853) started operating a service from into Fenchurch Street and the L&BR withdrew its service, closing the line between Gas Factory Junction and Bow & Bromley. The station had two heavily used platforms and a double track line from Stepney onwards. Following a reduced income at Blackwall (the South Eastern Railway had opened a direct line from to London), LBR shareholders voted to align with the ECR and jointly construct the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) from Tilbury to Forest Gate Junction. Services would split at , one service to Bishopsgate and the other to Fenchurch Street along the reopened line via Bow & Bromley (although the station did not reopen). To accommodate this service a third line was built between Stepney and Fenchurch Street which was enlarged at this time. The new service commenced on 13 April 1854 using ECR locomotives and stock. To accommodate the changes, the station was enlarged to designs by George Berkley incorporating a by trussed-arch vaulted roof. Two platforms were added at the same time as was a circulating area for L&BR and LTSR traffic. The NLR, wanting its own London terminus instead of co-sharing Fenchurch Street, extended its railway towards the new Broad Street station in 1865. The railway through Stratford was unable to cope with the extra services, so the LTSR planned to build a more direct line from to Gas Factory Junction. The third track from Stepney to Fenchurch Street opened in 1856, followed by the direct line from Barking in 1858. The GER took over operation of the NLR shuttle from Bow in 1869, which it operated until April 1892 when the second Bow Road railway station opened along with a passenger foot connection to the NLR station. Subsequent services into Fenchurch Street were operated by the GER and the LTSR, and three years later the viaduct from Stepney to Fenchurch Street was widened to accommodate a fourth track. Despite this, overcrowding of LTSR services was still occurring and this persisted until 1902 when the opening of the Whitechapel and Bow Railway offered an alternative route. In 1903, the GER built the Fairlop Loop, a short connecting line between and Woodford from where services ran to Liverpool Street and around 36 trains a day ran to Fenchurch Street. Electric services began on 6 November 1961 and a full electric timetable was introduced on 18 June the following year. In the 1980s, the station roof was dismantled and high-rise office blocks were built above the station leaving the 1854 facade intact. Fenchurch Street station suffered a negative reputation under public ownership. By the end of the 1980s, the former LTSR line was carrying over 50,000 passengers a day on a 50-year old infrastructure. The persistent overcrowding and uncleanliness on trains led to it being dubbed "the misery line". In 1989 Sir Robert Reid called the service from Fenchurch Street "wholly unacceptable", while Teresa Gorman, Member of Parliament for Billericay, subsequently called it "one of the disgraces of our public railway service for many years". In July 1994, shortly before rail privatisation, the station closed for seven weeks for an £83 million project to replace signals, track and electrification works. It was the first significant closure of a London terminal station, albeit planned and temporary. The development of Lakeside Shopping Centre, near Chafford Hundred and Thurrock, increased demand for services from the station. In 2019, a planning application was submitted to the City of London (planning authority) for permission to revamp the station building. Underground In the 1970s, it was planned to include Fenchurch Street as a station on the planned London Underground Fleet line. Space was allocated for a new Fenchurch Street Tube station in the basement of New London House, an office block that was constructed next to the main railway station in the 1970s. Construction of the line by Mott, Hay and Anderson and Sir William Halcrow and Partners was completed as far as Charing Cross in 1979, and the line came into operation as the Jubilee line. It was planned to extend the line eastwards from the end of the track terminus at Charing Cross to Fenchurch Street via Aldwych and Ludgate Circus. From Fenchurch Street, the line would have crossed the River Thames and continued southeastwards towards Surrey Docks and . A revised scheme approved in 1980 envisaged a more northerly route to Woolwich Arsenal and Beckton. By 1981, rising costs and high inflation led to London Transport abandoning the eastwards extension. The Jubilee line extension that was eventually completed in 1999 followed a different route south of the river, bypassing both Charing Cross and Fenchurch Street and instead heading east via Waterloo and the Greenwich Peninsula to . The extended Jubilee line crosses the LTS line from Fenchurch Street at , and this interchange has altered demand for Fenchurch Street, with many passengers from Essex changing there instead. ==Services==

Services from Fenchurch Street run towards East London and south Essex, including , , (for Lakeside Shopping Centre), (for the Gravesend–Tilbury Ferry and cruise services) , and . As of the June 2024 timetable the typical Monday to Friday off-peak service is: During peak periods services are increased up to 20 trains per hour. Most peak services have 12 cars. Although the station's capacity is small compared to other London terminals, it has a high footfall, averaging around 16 million passengers annually. A report in 2001 showed approximately 3,000 people commuted daily from Castle Point to the city via Fenchurch Street, while a 2013 report said it was the busiest station on the LTSR route, with 46,000 daily peak-time passengers. {{adjacent stations|noclear=y == Future ==

There have been proposals to move the station 380 yards to the east to allow the station to expand to 6 platforms, (up from the current 4) and would be built partly on the site of Tower Gateway DLR station, which would likely be permanently closed. The new station could be built with direct interchange with Tower Hill tube station, ==Incidents==

• On 1 August 1859, two trains collided head-on at low speed when an arriving North Woolwich service passed a signal at danger and struck a stationary Tilbury Riverside service. No-one was injured. • On 28 November 1860, a track defect caused the first four carriages of a departing train to Benfleet to derail at low speed. No-one was injured. • On 24 June 1872, a service arriving from collided with the buffer stops at the platform end, resulting in injury to three passengers. • On 17 August 1872, two people were injured when their train collided with an empty train being shunted out of a siding. • On 26 March 1873 an arriving train collided with two wagons of materials that had been left at the buffer stops, injuring four passengers. The cause was a combination of slightly excessive speed and slippery rails. • On 4 May 1893 a bricklayer, described at the time as "deaf and dumb", who was working on lineside alterations on the Blackwall line, near the station, was stuck by a train as he crossed the line, after not hearing shouted warnings. He later died from his injuries. • On 2 September 1903, 11 passengers and a crew member were injured when a train hit the buffers as it arrived from . • On 9 March 1908, a point cleaner working near the station was injured. A Board of Trade enquiry criticised the lack of look-outs for railway workers. • On 3 February 1912, approximately 86 people were injured when a train hit the buffer stops as it arrived from . An estimated 860 passengers were aboard at the time. Driver error and excessive speed were blamed. • On 26 January 1927, 10 people were injured on a train to Westcliff in a head-on collision and subsequent derailment caused by defects in the signal detection and signals. ==Goods depots==

A number of goods depots were established near Fenchurch Street owing to the station's proximity to the City of London. This table lists the depots connected to the line between the station and Christian Street Junction just east of : ==Cultural references==

The poet John Betjeman passed through the station on day-trips to Southend, and described it as a "delightful hidden old terminus". The first documented murder on the British rail network occurred on 9 July 1864, when Franz Muller murdered Thomas Briggs shortly after a train left the station en route to . Fenchurch Street is one of four railway stations on the standard UK Monopoly board, alongside Liverpool Street, Marylebone and King's Cross. All are former LNER terminal stations. The 2005 football hooliganism film Green Street used the station to represent Manchester Piccadilly. In the Douglas Adams novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Fenchurch was so-named because she was conceived at the station. ==References==